This brief communication serves as a response to an article by Lawrence S. Kubie titled The Destructive Potential of Humor in Psychotherapy, published in Volume XXVII (pp. 861-866) of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Poland maintains that considered use of humorous interventions strengthens the therapeutic alliance, fosters the splitting of the ego to enhance insight, and is an aid to empathy on the part of the therapist. Two fragments of classical analyses are presented in illustration. The author points out that although the analyst's use of humor may appear to violate the principle of abstinence, this principle itself may at times be used unconsciously by the analyst to act out sadistic impulses toward the patient. He concludes that although humor should not be a major tool of the analyst, neither should it always be avoided as antitherapeutic.